The Dark City
by Terranearth
Summary: Enter a realm of the darkness, where light is a memory, love a fragment of a distant past. Enter the Dark City of Coruscant. Please review.
1. Dark Night

**Dark Night**

Dark night, dark city.

The evening sun on the chrome glint of durasteel cast the Imperial District in a sublime orange glow, augmented by the brilliant variegated lights of a thousand sparkling windows. Soon night would settle, a false night erased by the brilliance of Coruscant's afterglow.

Coruscant had never been ugly from above. Above, where the giants of galactic civilization stood in dignified silence against the lonely winds of the high places of the city-world's troposphere. But as one descends where the sun would never shine again, down and down the thousand levels of bitter stratification, where grime, dirt, poverty becomes king, where the exiled, the underclass, and the insane dwell in wretched destitude within the forgotten bowels of the lowest five hundred meters, Coruscant is no longer the shining jewel it seems to be from the top, where lords dwell, pleasure craft drift along the drafty currents, and the richest of the rich bandy in careful pleasantry.

No, indeed. Where the playground of the rich ends, the Dark City begins. And as the Dark City, itself, ends, we enter the Jungle of Coruscant, the habitation of mutated carnivores, shambling half-humans, and the suppressed animality of a world that has for twenty-five thousand years been a symbol of the ultimate and crushing superiority of technology.

It was pathetically easy for someone to disappear on Coruscant; all he needed was the guts and the determination to live. Beyond all cost. Merely by descending a turbolift, down and down, traveling six kilometers through the cyclopean platforms that held up a city, the foundations made from the pinnacles of older skyscrapers, the sheer maze of millions of interconnected passageways, tunnels, and elevated bridges, one could escape the casual eye; no effort was involved in losing yourself within the mass of the trillions of people who walked the walkways of Coruscant.

Losing yourself in the Dark City was another matter.

Acha Demotrova was a human from Commenor who had committed a crime. He had been an Imperial spy, stationed to remain on Coruscant after the New Republic had wrenched it, at terrible cost, from the reborn Palpatine's grasp. As a consequence of that terrible battle vast sections of the planetwide city had been razed, and there was unrest even within the Dark City. Chaos reigned. The New Republic was still in the process of rebuilding; billions of credits were spent in the half-successful attempts at rehabilitating the lower levels. But somehow the Dark City was never reached; it was so low that even the Republic engineers assumed that the Dark City had been lost to the Jungle.

Demotrova had been identified. Using means available to him, he had slipped out, somehow, of the closing web of the NRI and disappeared from sight, carrying with him vital intelligence that was a threat to Republic stability.

He had escaped to the lowest reaches of Coruscant; he was now lost.

An'kar Vars was a native of Coruscant. An'kar Vars was also a well-known detective in some circles; it was rumoured that he knew the planet as well as the back of his hand. In a Coruscant aircab on the day of Demotrova's escape, he sat in faint unease. Next to him, a hooded figure lounged, staring at him with unseeable eyes.

The hooded figure slurred his words in a low gravelly crackle that irritated Vars. "Demotrova may have gone down to the Dark City."

Var's ears pricked up at the name. "The Dark...City? That's impossible. No one knows about the Dark City."

"Please. The Empire knew about it, in their time here. Living in the Dark City is no easy thing, but it is possible, as you very well know. We keep it quiet; it coincides with our intent that few know of its existence."

The hood turned, unseen eyes fixed upon Var's. "But you do. You've been there. You know it." The gravelly voice dropped down to a whisper. "_Find_ him."

Vars knew all about the Dark City. The lowest two hundred inhabited meters of Coruscant's urbanity, the last, feeble layer of civilization between Coruscant and the Jungle, of Coruscant's deep underground. The Dark City had last felt the rays of Coruscant's sun more than a hundred thousand years ago; as Coruscant grew higher and richer, the tentacles of durasteel had at last smothered Coruscant's virgin soil, damning it for eternity. It was a thin slice that covered over three quarters of Coruscant's surface area. The remaining quarter of Coruscant had once been covered by ocean; those monstrous bodies of water had been stored in vast underground cisterns or frozen in the ice-caps during the course of Coruscant's urbanization. Only a few last vestiges of surface water graced the landscape; in the West Sea, or some of the smaller leisure lakes that dotted the Imperial Precinct.

Reaching the Dark City itself was no easy task. As Vars made his slow descent down, he began to think of all the places that Demotrova could have escaped to. There were few. But he had some ideas. The Dark City was not a pleasant place to be, but, as with all places, some areas were better-off than others. He inspected, with a maudlin air, his orders, printed on an innocuous piece of flimsi. Combing the entire Dark City would have been an impossible task for one man. There were others, NRI agents, other similarly-employed detectives, on the case.

The Dark City was a restricted place. It had been used for exiling dissidents and criminals, even in the days of the Old Republic. There were, in the whole of Coruscant, perhaps fifty entrances into what was considered the Dark City. All fifty were hidden, all fifty were guarded by lethal defence systems.

No problem. Vars had never used them before; he knew lesser-traveled passages into the Dark City.

The one he chose involved climbing down an immense ventilation tunnel, one of those that connected to a Coruscant SDU, or Sewage Disposal Unit. An SDU involved a giant SO cannon that fired processed projectiles of unrecyclable matter into Coruscant's primary, or on most days, SDU ships that carried the waste to Revisse or Ulabos for long-term processing using specialized bacteria. SDU processors were huge bioengineered worms that required large amounts of air. Ventilation shafts were therefore pivotal in the smooth running of an SDU. Var's SDU was one of the oldest; buried beneath a war-ravaged industrial cluster, it connected to the Dark City itself.

Vars felt tiny and alone, climbing down that enormous shaft. It was perilous; although there were stairs by the sides of the huge vent, Vars still felt a sense of acrophobia as he made his way down. The going was arduous, and it took almost an hour before he finally made his way to the bottom. There, it was dark save for the feeble flickering glow of a single dying light. Activating his glowrod Vars shone his small light into the vast, empty chamber whose ceiling was lost in the dim depths above.

He was down here, once again. As he surveyed the grimy walls his heart sank in that familiar way. The contours of his face pulled back in grim lines.

He had almost reached the Dark City.

Vars walked on through the dank, uninhabited passageways, holding his glowrod in a tight, white grip. He knew that nothing would disturb him here. There was nothing here. Every now and then, when he came to a branch, or a junction, he would navigate his surefooted way through one branch or other. Coruscant was, like everything else, a system, and once you knew its rules, its weaknesses, you could exploit it. But the psychological aspect of tribulation was not so easily conquered. Shadow loomed in every turn, and Vars swore to the disconcerting natterings of distant ghosts of the mind. Eventually, he reached a blast door. With a mental sigh, he thumbed the controls, and the door creaked painfully open. Vars found himself in a drafty chamber with dirt-streaked walls. In its centre was a huge, ragged hole that held the gigantic remains of a once-vicious beast. Reluctantly, Vars trudged the length of the chamber and stood before the mouth of that enormous skull. Taking a stale breath, he stepped in.

And fell.

He fell perhaps a hundred, two hundred metres, through a gently curved tunnel, until he sat before a trap door. Clambering up, he took a mental sigh before opening it. Climbing through, he entered a small box-like chamber. He opened a nearby grille. Took a deep breath. This was the turning point, he knew. There was no going back after he passed the gates of torment that now stood, threateningly, before him.

At last his mind broke and resolve hardened into a scythe that rends all doubt-

Almost unconsciously, he strode through. And all at once, he was greeted by the familiar stench of his own hatred.

Welcome, said the stench. Welcome to the Dark City.


	2. Dark Past

**Dark Past**

The Dark City was always a salve against the light. Where light could not reach, the domain of the restless soul dwelt in tormented agonies of a squandered past.

Vars had lived the Dark City for three days. Three days a silent marauder of the deep dark places of the world, in the bowels of an ecumenepolis spread too high and too far, where oppressive girders squashed down a populace ruined by their own folly. Three days spent chasing a flit of a shadow that might not even be there. For every day spent in the company of the denizens of the Dark City or alone in some dark chamber Vars cursed Demotrova with all the ancient power of the Jedi's righteous retribution.

The Dark City had weathered a thousand tribulations, ignorant of the visscitudes of Galactic politics that were beyond their reach. It was one of the last remaining constants to the ever-rushing tide of urban change in the sunlight realm. Wherever Vars wandered, searching for Demotrova, he witnessed the grim realities of existence of the forgotten wretches that inhabited the Dark City. It was a feudal society. Near amenities like gas ducts or hydroponic outlets, places called districts had formed, walling themselves out of the wanton anarchy that plagued the void between them. Within these islands, marginalized populations had at least a veneer of tolerable existence. Outside, Vars witnessed tragedy on a titanic scale. The insane, the heavily ill, mutants, and gangs of slavering, pathetic bandits roved this terrible realm. It was a brutal world of oppression and death.

In a district named Pilhadis, where men and women eked out a meager existence on hydroponic produce, Vars had met a shabby personage who bore the inappropriate name of Duke Kaa. Kaa was, as he claimed, the descendant of a group of rebels who had plotted to bring down Elhadi Valorum, the popularly known Iron Chancellor. He had lost an eye one way or another; the other was a sickly yellow heavy with cataract. Kaa was known in Pilhadis for his knowledge of the Dark City.

Duke Kaa had been suffering from an ailment, known to the Pilhadis as the Krodos. Vars privately felt that this, perhaps, was one of the by-products of the Krytos virus that had decimated millions of non-human lives in the Bacta War a few years back. Vars had supplied some bactade syrup for Kaa's illness, and even after such a short while Kaa's condition had improved tremendously. His cough had faded somewhat and the cataract seemed to be disappearing. Now that Kaa felt better he was effusive with thanks.

Kaa claimed to have heard rumours of a foreigner slinking here and there through the dilipidated throughfares of the Lower Dark City. Vars hesitated about going so close to the Jungle. Even he had never been there. But for the sake of captuing Demotrova he had to go on. And with Kaa as his guide, what could go wrong?

Kaa was coughing again, wrackingly, and Vars knew that he needed a full vaccine treatment. Mere bactade infused with Krytos vaccine would do nothing to cure Kaa completely, and Vars was running low on his stock of the nanite salve. Who knew, he thought during the dark nights, when Kaa slept and snored like a foghorn, what a cross-species variant would do to a population of humans the size of Coruscant. Was that why the NRI-

His thoughts spiralled, out of control. He, himself, had been nursing a slight cough. He had thought nothing of going near the invalid, sharing space with him. He had prided himself on his endurance, his _sympathy_, his _ability_ to coexist with such a specimen of the dungeons of this dark world. He had thought that the ability to consort comfortably with wretchedness was an indicator of his altruism. A shared past-

He hadn't thought of the side-effects of such foolish submission to kindness. With growing horror, he thought of the implications of Kaa's death. He did not know the dark corridors that they now walked. This side of Coruscant was alien to him, unknown, deep enough and low enough that even he had never cared to descend to. And if Kaa went, where would he go?

Time seemed to lurch by on crippled struts. As Kaa led Vars stealthily and quietly along little-taken routes untouched by sentient feet, as the empty dreadful vastness of the lesser-known parts of the Dark City began to dissolve his willpower. He knew that this impending trauma was an artifice of something physical.

Later that day, as he and Kaa were resting in a narrow corridor, he asked where they were headed. Kaa only smiled enigmatically as he said, "Down."

Vars was silently bemoaning his fate as he lurched, coughing, behind Kaa. His coughing bouts were not relenting, and he only had perhaps three day's bactade left for himself and Kaa. He was so absorbed in worry, that he almost lurched into Kaa's diminutive form when the other stopped abruptly in front of him.

Vars opened his mouth, questioning - then his eyes refocused, not on Kaa, but on what was in front of them.

A turbolift, glowing faintly in the filthy corridor darkness. Still functional, it seemed. And recently used.

And on the ground, next to this apparition, a recently discarded piece of flimsi, surface-oxidized so that its contents were destroyed forever. Vars picked it up gingerly, examined it with an experienced detective's eye. It was, insofar as he could tell, recently dropped. Making the obvious connection, Demotrova approached the turbolift - only to stop at the clearing of Kaa's throat.

"I feel I should warn you, man," Kaa rasped. "That lift has two stops. One here, the other," and his face pulled back in a mask of a grim grimace, "goes down..to the Jungle."

Vars froze. "You can't be serious. Demotrova would never go to the Jungle. It's suicide."

Kaa sighed. "That's what I'm saying, Vars. Your search might have been in vain." He lowered his voice down to a whisper. He might already... be dead."

The sound of silence plodded on as Vars and Kaa stood there, unmoving, like figures frozen in the ice of a frigid world.


	3. Dark Jungle

**Dark Jungle**

Indecision.

Vars stared at Kaa, not knowing how to proceed. Vars felt a throbbing in his heart, thought terrible thoughts about the deadly tangled mass of death that seethed beneath his feet, so far down.

Vars felt a rising desperation. Why had Kaa even led them here, if he had known Demotrova had gone down to what probably constituted a gruesome death in the eternal darkness of the Jungle? But he checked himself there. Kaa had done what he'd been asked. Vars only wished he'd spoken up about where they were headed. Kaa had an irritating penchant for being enigmatic, and worse, taciturn and laconic, when the mood took him.

"So, Kaa. What's the meaning of this? Why didn't you tell me before?"

But Kaa had lapsed into a strange distant silence. When, a few abstracted seconds later, he finally replied, it was with seeming reluctance. "I lost my eye down there, you know. First and last time I ever went down. I swore I'd never go again. Then you came. Fed me your medicine. Healed me. Shown more care for me than anyone had ever done in my life." Kaa sighed. "When you said you had to find the spy, I knew my time had come." The dim illumination cast his smile in dim shadows. "I'll follow you even to death, you know. Even to the Jungle."

Vars felt a distant chord of emotion, long suppressed, rise within him. Choking with feelings felt so long ago, he hastily turned away. An almost suidical determination rose within him. Calming himself down, he turned again, slowly this time, and faced the trembling Kaa.

"So be it, then."

Vars closed his eyes and stabbed at the turbolift access.

000

The journey ever down was slow, and the slowness of it only grated on Var's frayed nerves. Vars paced in the limited space, Kaa gibbered abit with suppressed emotion, coughing in racking fits and fighting to draw deep breaths. Vars had almost gone mad with worry, when with sudden and dramatic finality, the turbolift lurched to a stop. Outside, Vars could hear the rusty sawing of metal and the screech of chrome.

They were in the Jungle.

Screechingly, the turbolift door creaked open, whirring. Pitch blackness stared them in the face, and a sickeningly rich organic pungence wafted up Var's nostril, sending him into a choking fit. "Quiet now," whispered Kaa, with an almost manicial nonchalance. "You never be knowin' what's lurking out there."

Here, in the Jungle, Coruscant was at last revealed in all its natural existence. Calcified walls and the remnants of durasteel merged in a strange harmony of nature and artificiality.

It was dark as they wandered out of the turbolift. Vars felt cold and blind in the depths of the inky darkness. He knew he would need a means of night-vision the moment he learned of this assignment. Rummaging in his pouch he removed two nightvision goggles and passed one to Kaa. Vars strapped his pair on - and cursed disbelievingly.

"Dark kriffing space..."

For in Var's field of vision, there were a pile of bodies. Bodies of the eyeless carnivores featured in the CWMD files he had read in preparation for the assignment, never suspecting that he would actually need the information that now swirled disturbingly in his head.

Eyeless carnivores, mutant descendants of exiled sentients, quadrupedal, intelligent, but ravenous, bloodthirsty monsters which hunted in packs, whose primary means of communication was a system of high-pitched shrieks just on the edge of the ultrasonic, who had no qualms on turning on each other in times of hardship.

And a pile of them, dead as stones, now lay in a macabrely neat heap before their eyes.

A piercing shriek on the edge of hearing brought Vars back to his senses. He looked wildly at Kaa. In the dark Kaa didn't bother keeping his emotions in check; terror danced across his squat features. "Go back, Vars said thickly through the bile rising in his throat. "We have to...get back to the elevator...go up-"

Kaa shook his head, convulsive. Sweating with fear, Vars turned to look, and the sight that beheld him almost robbed him of his sanity. The turbolift was inexplicably dead; its circuitry no longer glowed. Sparks flew from the ends of snapped cable. They would have to find another way.

From the distance, shrieks sounded again and again, in culminating notes of agony, and Vars knew he was as good as dead.

Drawing his trusty Merr-Sonn Vars ran, Kaa following closely behind. Shrieks sounded, drawing ever closer. With wild abandon Vars stumbled through an opening in an unseeable wall. Vars nearly tripped over something prone on the ground, on closer inspection it proved to be a corpse of one of the carnivores. Vars scanned the vistas and found more bodies.

Suddenly Kaa exclaimed, "Behind us!" Furious, Vars snapped back in a breathy whisper. "Quiet! These things-"

But he broke off at the sound of a shriek, frighteningly nearby. Three of the carnivores bounded into view at the opening, and yawing like dogs, hurtled towards them. In a fearful haze Vars raised his blaster and squeezed off three shots. One of the beasts toppled, screaming. Emitting fearful cries the two creatures hesitated, then bounded foward again. Vars continued firing as the two of them ran, however, and soon he had dispatched the second one. The last was catching up. It took a powerful leap at them, and would have torn them to pieces, but Var's shot caught it cleanly in the belly and it landed, dead and harmless, on Kaa's leg. Kaa fell, whimpering.

Vars heaved a vast sigh of relief, and the tension drained out of him. Calming himself down, he strode over to where Kaa was supine. Helping him hurriedly up, Vars hissed, brushing dust off his clothes, "Don't make any loud noise. These creatures act on sound. Understand?"

Kaa nodded mutely. Vars continued. "Now, I've thought of something. Something, _someone, _must have done this to these creatures. If we follow the trail of corpses, perhaps we'll strike something. Let's go."

So they continued. Padding quietly through the ruin of Coruscant's last jungle, following a trail of breadcrumbs that led inexorably to their goal. Cold stillness stifled them in the eternal night of the underground as they wandered along their trail, knowing that if they could possibly get to its end, revelation would come. For Vars, at least.

There was no conversation, only breathy, whispered orders or warnings. In the distance, cries would sound, cries of predators ravenous in their wretched prison. They kept as quiet as could be. Only twice more did Vars have to use his blaster. Vars knew each step taken was a step further out of this terrible stifling numbingness, of the cold and the dark.

Stumbling out of a dark outcroppping, onto virgin Coruscant soil, Vars knew that he had finally struck gold as he looked upon a vast, spherical vessel, emanating faint latent heat, half-buried in what must be Coruscant's true surface. Vars perceived that they were in a cavern of some kind, for the air around them felt expansive. How this artefact had become buried here, in the deep past of Coruscant's long history, Vars did not know. With Kaa at his side, he approached the construct.

A loud, unearthly keening filled his ears as a hairy, slavering beast pounced atop him. Nearby he could hear Kaa's faint shout and guessed, he, too, had been attacked. Growling wetly the ravening beast cuffed him savagely on the head, claws barely raking his cheek as he ducked back. He grabbed his blaster from his side and fired off two shots in the beast's belly. Immediately, it went limp, dead. Clambering up, Vars rushed to where Kaa was struggling and with a mighty blow of the blaster's butt stunned the creature; a further two shots into the soft carapace lining itsback killed it.

Vars wiped sweat from his brow, blowing out his breath, looked up and felt his jaws hang slack. Because they were surrounded now, by tens of the same creatures that had attacked them, and this time, they were quite prepared for whatever he had in store for them. They were outnumbered. Badly. Vars wondered what death was like.

But all was not lost for Vars, as he took a last look at the ancient vessel.

Vars had read many stories. Adventure novels, romance, mysteries. His datapad had hundreds of his favourite stories, and perhaps a thousand more untouched. Vars had often encountered a curious plot device that he had read about in these novels; it was called a _Deus ex Machina._ From his researches, Vars discovered that the etymology of this curious phrase was not known, indeed, one could hardly claim it to be Basic at all. But he did understand what it meant. It was a plot device to get the protagonist out of a desperate situation by the introduction of a hitherto unknown plot element.

Vars thanked the stars for _Deus Ex Machina_ as he saw the vessel light up in a string of blue, and a faint yellow light glowed out of what was unmistakably an opening.

000

Kaa had been injured badly. Vars fed him what was left of the bactade, then tended to his wounds using some nanite reassemblers he had found in his duffel. Kaas was in pain; Vars could see that. His wounds were turning faintly orange, boils were rising. "That thing must have poisoned you," Vars said. "Lie back and try to relax. The bactade is a powerful antipoison. Let it do its work."

Setting Kaa gently down on the smooth chrome floor, he surveyed his surroundings. The design was alien, unique, but some of the pictorial signs were understandable. They were in a large chamber. The door they had come in through was at one end, a long white corridor stretched out the other way. The surroundings were the cleanest Vars had been in ever since he had left his apartment. He could still hear the faint reverberations of the creatures outside hurling themselves at the door, trying to get inside to them.

Vars looked at Kaa. His face was a greyish pallor, his lone eye was sunken. The cataract had gone completely ever since he had started taking the bactade; the eye looked a healthy white-on-blue. Kaa looked back at him, his expression pained and dull. "I think...I can get up."

"Are you sure? You look like a Quarren in a desert."  
"What's a Quarren?" Kaa grimaced. "I can. Give me some time." Painfully, he heaved himself to his feet, but fell again in a calvacade of whimperings. In the end, Vars was reduced to supporting Kaa on one arm and his shoulders as the other tried walking on his own. In this awkward position they started the arduous journey down the long corridor.

000

Vars finally laid Kaa on the floor, sighing with barely concealed relief. Kaa got worse by the minute, muttering in a delirium, up to the point where he had collapsed on Var's shoulders and refused to budge, half-conscious. Vars had to resort to carrying Kaa on his back.

The corridor was long, but mercifully simple to navigate. A huge door, faintly glowing, towered before them now. Vars laid a tentative hand on the pad at its centre - and slowly, the massive slab of gleaming metal slid apart. Through the widening gap Vars could make out a room, vaguely spherical, dimly lit, covered everywhere with strange glyphs and computer terminals. A walkway led to a platform suspended in the centre of the massive sphere. In the dim light Vars could see a shapeless mass slumped messily in the centre of the platform. He approached to take a closer look - and gasped.

It was Demotrova, and he was dead, eyes staring in maddened horror into space.

Behind him Kaa gave a gasp, then a long, mournful moan.

000

Var's heart throbbed wildly in its cavity. He knew someone else had to be in here, had to have done this. But there was not a mark on Demotrova's body. How had he died?

Kaa gave another moan, but this one was shorter, more desperate. "Ah, Vars, Vars...I can feel it...it's growing inside, getting...I can't...can't..." Vars turned to look, and gave a shout in pure wild deathly terror. For Kaa was writhing wildly on the ground. His lone eye was bloodshot and wide open, his features liquid, his mouth gaping, his arms flailing. Then, before Var's terrified gaze Kaa began to melt. His face dissolved into a featureless writhing mass, his body morphed. Kaa let out a last gurgling shriek of terror, which turned into a low growl. And at last when all of Kaa had gone the body began to resume the veneer of solidity, and as Vars looked on with convulsive terror the shape resolved itself into none other - than one of the hairy creatures he had fought outside, the creatures who had injured Kaa.

The creature, once Kaa, growled. Its lone eye opened, and with the air of a majestic gladiator beast it rose on its haunches and fixed its gaze solely and supremely on Vars himself.

The creature began to lope toward Vars. But Vars did not react. He was rooted to the spot, staring fixedly, face frozen, at the hurtling mass of fur and hair crossing the distance between them. Only at the last, desperate minute did Vars raise his blaster, and with tears on his cheeks, squeezed the trigger. The bolt blasted a smoking hole in the creature's belly, killing it, and it collapsed with a last, empty sigh of exhaled air. Vars collapsed, sobbing, onto the ground.

It was like killing a friend. And the worst thing was, he didn't know why he thought that way.

000


	4. Dark City

**Dark City**

Vars didn't know how long he sat there, rocking back and forth on his knees, wrestling with emotions that bewildered and frightened him. He knew that in that vital moment he had lost control of long-suppressed feelings that had haunted him in the depths of countless nights. Only by the primal instinct of self-preservation could he have summoned up the workings of his muscles to fire that one bolt of molten death; smiting his own demise in the gut.

Vars was alone now, stranded with a dead man in the deepest bowels of Coruscant, and he was, of all things, bemoaning his tortured past. He snorted derisively, half-choked in sobs that were stuck in his throat. Drawing up all his resolve he put on his shell of emotionlessness once more and stood. And coughed wrenchingly. He checked his stock of bactade. Only a few drops left. In a fit of abandon he drained the last drops of that salty solution, kept the vial, and began examining Demotrova's corpse.

No trauma of any kind, no signs of struggle, no exterior wounds. Demotrova had died, perhaps, of gas, or some airborne poison, or perhaps even nanites. Demotrova's mouth was open; his last breaths had been gasps, from the looks of it. Whatever had killed Demotrova still had the power to kill him.

Rising again Vars began to slide his hands over the lone active computer terminal, familiarizing himself with the unfamiliar placements of the various controls. The terminal was strange, its layout archaic, but it was still recognizable as a construct of a known technology; Aurebesh glowed reassuringly out of the screen. A small violet phial on the screen began to blink, and Vars reached out with a tentative finger, and with one jerky motion, touched it.

His finger broke the edge of the screen like a fish out of crystalline water. The violet phial turned orange, and began spinning wildly. The air seemed to fill with static, tingling down the length of his spine. Then, as if from some unseen and unknowable cue, the air seemed to freeze- and a softly feminine voice filled the room with a bizarrely vibrant menace.

_"Welcome, visitor," _it purred, breathily. _"You are the 236th entry in the Judicator log. Your DNA, mental signature, psychological profile have been noted. You are human, Coruscanti. You have been deemed able and mentally stable."_

"Thanks," Vars replied sarcastically.

_"No affimatory acknowledgements are required. The Judicator network is ready. Initiation commences in 2 hours."_

"Initiation?" Vars frowned, confused.

Suddenly, he could not breathe. He felt cold, clammy hands clamp onto his throat. And he knew that, however impossible it seemed, it was Demotrova's hands around his neck. Demotrova, who had been dead a few moments earlier, was trying to kill him, cold grip implacable on his throat.

As Vars struggled, gasping for air, against Demotrova's monstrous grip, the clinical feminine purr continued, oblivious to the mortal struggle below. _"The artificial application of surgical tectonic alterations, designed for minimal intrusion. These alterations involve the elevation of subsuming plates, bringing oceanic plates to the surface for mining or construction purposes, or that of surface plates for magma-mining or miscellaneous purposes."_

Vars heard, horrorstruck, as he fought. He had managed to release Demotrova's viselike grip on his throat, but Demotrova was still as implacably vicious as ever.

Vars redoubled his efforts. If the inhabitants of the Dark City and the Jungle were loosed upon Coruscant, the horrors that would unleash were too terrible to conceive.

Yet, even as he struggled and fought, his detective's mind gnawed at the problem. A picture, a pattern was forming in his mind.

What had Demotrova come across? Why had he come down to the Jungle? How had he arranged for the elevator to break down? How had he killed the carnivores? How did he feign his death? The answers to these questions pointed to a plan more grandiose than Vars had conceived. A plan with no less a goal than the destruction of Coruscant and, subsequently, that of the New Republic.

It must have been the last resort of the late Emperor, a last spiteful blow designed to undermine the victory of Luke Skywalker and his ilk. Who else knew about the Dark City? Who else had the resources to act in such a fashion? Shudderingly, Vars thought of the monster which had killed Duke Kaa. And of his own, bitter cough. Tools of the Dark City and the Jungle, loosed, at long last, upon a Coruscant, ripe prey for their bitterness and savagery. A perverse sort of poetic justice; all the filth of the Dark City infecting Coruscant, transforming it into a dead world rife with roving monsters and Krodos sufferers. But he still felt that inexplicable guilt that threatened breakdown, even as he fought for his life.

What of it? He cursed at the beginning of yet another struggle, this time in his mind, distant against the larger issues of Coruscant and his life - but it still felt more important, in this crystal moment, than anything else in the world. He had left them for a free life, found a way out, leaving them to suffer even as he made his mark on Coruscant. In all his desperate adventures, a young boy, he escaped into comfort and safety, into the hands of a kind, childless couple who one day found him sleeping at their doorstep, exhausted from climbing. He had left his true kin to suffer in the Dark City, and escaped into the light. Vars, stolen name of a stolen life.

He had been eager to set off in his mission, but fearful. He had thought nothing of his _kin_ coming near him. He had, foolishly, allowed false hope in the land that had none, a false hope that led to genuine disappointment. And even as he traded blows with Demotrova a battle raged in the depths of his mind.

Vars was drowning in the haze of conflicting emotions. But it fed him an anger, anger at himself, anger at the world, at life in general. Rage that fed him a line, that gave him strength, that removed all his inhibitions. With one mighty blow he sent Demotrova flying to the ledge. He struck against the metal railing and collapsed, back against the ledge.

Finally, Demotrova spoke, cold, milky, lifeless eyes burning with a terrible cascade of raging fire.

"Why the rage, Vars?" A voice cackled. The sound, dry and crackling, seemed not to emanate from Demotrova's throat, but from the air around them. Demotrova's lips moved soundlessly. Vars felt unsettled even in his rage.

Vars drew his blaster and dealt Demotrova a savage blow on one side of his face. Demotrova's head snapped around at the force of the blow, and chunks of skin tore from Demotrova's cheek, revealing the bone-white layer beneath. Another resounding blow, and the entire face was ripped off to reveal a gleaming skull. A _metallic_ skull, Vars realized with sudden illumination. This Demotrova was not human. He was a droid.

The disembodied voice continued; Demotrova's metal jaws still moving out of sync with it.

"Liked it, Vars? Liked our...little plan? The _NRI agent_ in the aircab? The flimsiplast, the turbolift?"

Vars could only stare, aghast.

"Liked the Krodos, Vars? Liked the Rak'ghuls?" the dry voice continued. "I brought them down here, where they would fester and grow. You think I would have spared a pitiful little planet? I, destroyer of worlds?"

The voice continued. "All this time, you have tried to kill me again and again, and every time I have returned. Not even your pitiful little NRI knows anything about Demotrova. Demotrova, who never existed." The voice cackled with all the saturnine mirth of a coiling gurshaa. Then, sudden as the turning of leaves, it turned wondering. "The Force is such a strange thing. Powerful, mysterious. My Master never really revealed the full extent of its power to me. They say it can do strange things to a mind. Twist it, maim it beyond all recognition. The builders of this little toy were adepts in the Force, yes, yes...they were powerful. But not powerful enough, for they died like animals."

Vars breathed heavily as he stared at the faceless droid. It was twitching, even as the mouth continued moving soundlessly to the voice in the air. It was macabre. "What are you?" he whispered.

"And now I run into a problem. The Force works in mysterious ways. The originators of this machine were adamant that it needed the energy of a strong life force, strong in the Force. None of the pathetic specimens in the Dark City would serve. I needed someone who was strong enough to find this place of his own volition." The voice emitted a breathy snort. "I found you. Poetically neat, perhaps. A denizen of that nest of gundarks returned at last to his sad little homeland, bringing flowers and a tear. Touching." The crushing contempt grated in Var's ears.

"Who are you?" he repeated.

"Who am I?" the voice mocked. "The last time your pitiful band of budding heroes tried to kill me, on Onderon; you think I would have perished? The Dark Side has more power than that. _Infinite power._ The true nature of the Force is in the darkness of passion, and all else is a lie.  
"But when I fled, incorporeal, I still had many plans left to me. Do you think that I will let your rebel alliance keep Coruscant for your own? In my defeat, grant an enemy my last due? _Kah,"_ the voice spat through Demotrova's slow lips, "You are wrong, as are all your misguided, sentimental friends in the _New Republic._"

Vars whispered, "It's impossible. You can't-" Stealthily, his hand was feeling inside his duffel, one last trump-

"And now," the voice concluded, "we begin the end."

Somehow Vars could not find the strength to resist as Demotrova- no, the _droid_- stood up on his servos and caught him in an iron grip across the shoulders, hauling him to the edge that even then began to protrude a platform. And as he looked down to the chaotic mass of energy coruscating below, in the sheer depths of the enormous chamber, he felt the sinking sensation of his own death.

"Goodbye, Mr. Vars."

And Demotrova released Vars over the ledge.

But in the depths of victory, miscalculation rues. Vars stared down at the small vibroblade cupped hidden in his palm, intended to have been Demotrova's death. And as he began the fall he knew that there were two ways to die. And so, summoning his last desperate reserve of whatever inner strength he had left- he stabbed himself in the chest and felt a clear blossoming of senseless pain as the vibroblade did its work. And as he faded away he found a truth within himself, of bright burning glory that was his mandate from the seed of his own conception, a truth that washed away all doubt, all trouble, and all fear as he faded into oblivion, life trickling away beneath the glittering richness of Coruscant. And his last experience in the corporeal plane was a sensation of warmth, a mother's warmth, and he heard voices of men and women, human and alien, wise and old, practitioners of a power older than the Universe, welcoming him home.

Vars died in truth two seconds before he struck the twisting chaos of the burning energy below. All that impacted the Judicator mass was a body, bereft of the Force that drives the Universe. And even as a deep voice moaned howling defeat and rage in the dark places of the world, the Judicators, sprinkled all over the surface of Coruscant, looked to an energy source that never materialized.

When at last the countdown reached zero, the dormant machines of the Judicator began to whir into life, then, as energies failed them, crashed into tumbling ruin, rending the artifices of the Jungle, sending vibrations even to the sheerest pinnacles of the Imperial Palace above. The machines that had for so long been a threat to Coruscant were now wrought to destruction, and even though there was no voice to celebrate, there were the resounding raptures of the Force that spread across the galaxy, that caused Jedi and Force sensitive to feel a lightening of their hearts like the glory of a rising morning sun.

As morning rose over the Imperial District the scintillating lights of the night were dwarfed by Coruscant's golden dawn. Sunlight glinted off polished chrome. The seeming peace belied panic of last night's tremors, tremors felt all across the face of the city-planet. The New Republic Coruscant Reconstruction Department promised to look into the disturbance and assured citizens that there was nothing to fear, that Coruscant was one of the most stable planets in the galaxy after extensive plate-forming performed thousands of years ago.

And in the Dark City a parable of renewed hope was spun, of the kindly man who gave them life and a flicker of happiness in the dark hopelessness of their grim reality. And as the inhabitants of oppression lifted their faces to the surface, they thought they could feel the first glimmers of pure sunlight denied, for so long, to them.

_000000000000000000000_

_New Republic Coruscant Reconstruction Department  
A4-345 Paragraphs 4-5b_

_"...studies made of Coruscant's lower levels as mandated by Directive 04556a have revealed a hitherto _unknown _under-population residing in the lower depths of Coruscant's urban strata. This underclass comprises an entire sub-culture of their own. Anthropologists and medical staff have been called down to establish contact with aforementioned subjects...the NRCRD respectfully requests a continuance in the process of emancipation of the underclass..."_


End file.
